Don't Turn Your Back on the Ocean

by Janet Dawson

  By the time I returned from the Bagel Bakery, Mother was out of bed, but still in her nightgown and robe. She stood in the kitchen, staring out the window over the sink as she waited for her teakettle to boil. Maybe she was looking at the hummingbird flitting around her overgrown garden, which canted steeply up the hillside behind the house, but I doubted it. Her face, still puffy from sleep, looked worried and preoccupied.

  “Want a bagel?” I asked, waggling my paper sacks at her. The onion bagels were so pungent they rated their own sack. Everything else had been put into the larger bag.

  “Sure.” She inspected my purchases, selecting a cinnamon-raisin bagel. She took a large serrated knife from the block near the stove and expertly split the bagel. As she did so I thought of the scar on her hand and how she’d acquired it. Mother took a plate from the cupboard and set one bagel half on it, then spread it with a thin layer of plain cream cheese.

  “Thanks for going after bagels,” she said as her teakettle began to whistle.

  “You don’t have much in the way of supplies,” I pointed out.

  “I was going to get to the grocery store, but time got away from me.” Mother poured hot water over her tea bag and carried plate and mug to the kitchen table. “It seems to do that lately.”

  “I’ll pick up a few things today.”

  Mother glanced at the digital clock on the microwave. “I shouldn’t have slept so late. I have to get to the restaurant.”

  “I thought your new assistant Julian is supposed to lighten your load.”

  “He does. But we’ve got that luncheon today. I know you have a lot of people you want to visit, but I hope you’ll come by. I’d like you to meet Karl.”

  “I planned to. I want to interview your staff.”

  Mother didn’t say anything. Instead she picked up her bagel and nibbled on it. “Interview the staff,” she said finally, reaching for her tea. “I’m having all sorts of qualms about this.”

  I sighed. “I thought we agreed I’d look into those incidents. If you don’t do anything about them, they’ll continue. And possibly get worse. Just the fact that I’ll be asking questions might be enough to convince whoever’s responsible to stop.”

  “It’s just that—” Mother stopped for another mouthful of tea. “The idea that any of my people could do such things. Except for Julian, they’ve all worked for me for several years, some of them since I opened the restaurant. I’m picky about who I hire, whether they work in the kitchen or in the dining room. I don’t just take anyone off the street. I trust my staff. Having you talk to them is like saying I don’t.”

  “I realize that. But interviewing employees is the logical place to start. An outsider doesn’t have the kind of access required to pull these stunts. If a customer walked into the kitchen and started messing with your knives, you’d notice.”

  “Yes, you’re right.” Mother conceded this with a nod and took another bite from her bagel. “But I hope you’ll be as careful—and diplomatic—as possible.”

  “I’m good at what I do,” I told her.

  She smiled. “Yes. I know.”

  Mother finished her bagel and went to her bedroom to, as she described it, put herself together. When she emerged she looked like a different person. Her salt-and-pepper hair was combed back into an attractive no-nonsense coif and she wore a pale rose dress with a shawl collar, made of lightweight washable silk. Around her neck was a strand of pearls, complemented by matching pearls in her earlobes. Her shoes were sensibly low-heeled. She’d play the hostess at the catered luncheon, then during the afternoon lull, she’d shift persona to the chef of Café Marie. Her cooking clothes, as she called them, were zipped into the black garment bag she carried.

  She gave me a quick peck on the cheek on her way to the front door, tossing words and the garment bag over her shoulder. “I’ll see you later.” I watched her little Honda back out of the driveway onto Larkin Street, then drive off in the direction of downtown.

  I surveyed the refrigerator and cupboards, made a list, and headed to the nearest grocery store. I had returned and was putting away my purchases when the phone rang. It was Donna.

  “I just got off the phone with my source over at the sheriff’s department,” she said, sounding subdued.

  “Any news?” I had the phone tucked under my chin as I stashed a half gallon of milk in the refrigerator.

  “The sheriff’s rescue unit recovered the body late yesterday afternoon. They made a positive identification this morning. It’s Ariel Logan.”

  The bleakness of her voice radiated through the telephone wire. I had never met Ariel Logan, but now I felt a twinge of sadness at the confirmation of her death.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said slowly. “How did she die? Does Bobby know?”

  “At this point no one’s sure if it’s an accidental drowning or something else. The autopsy’s in progress. I’ll call you as soon as I know anything. Bobby probably doesn’t know. It’s after twelve now. I’m going down to the wharf to see if the Nicky II is in yet.”

  Café Marie is located in downtown Monterey near a house where Robert Louis Stevenson lived briefly in 1879. The tourist publications call the area Historic Old Monterey, the part of town that was a thriving seaport when this coast was Alta California, part of Spain and then Mexico. The restaurant began its life as a residence and evolved into a store. When Mother purchased the building it was empty, and the transformation she wrought was complete and costly.

  Mother gutted the interior, stripping away the building’s previous lives. She spared no expense in creating the high-tech kitchen or the inlaid wooden bar. The hardwood floors were polished to a warm buttery sheen. She chose the highest-quality linen for the white tablecloths and napkins in a shade of turquoise that reminded me of Monterey Bay. It took her months to decide on china and tableware and to pick out the glassware that graced the tables. As for the tables and chairs, they were treasures found in antique stores and secondhand shops, restored and refinished. Few of them matched, but this added to the charm of the dining room.

  The walls were white, decorated with artwork from local artists. The subject of each painting was the ocean in its infinite variety. Some were calm, like the watercolor near the entrance, showing fishing boats on the bay, or angry and vital like the oil above the bar, with huge waves crashing onto the rocky coast.

  In addition to picking out china and linen, Mother contended with contractors and workmen, inspectors and permits, and governmental entities, from the city of Monterey to the county health department to the state alcohol and beverage control board. All in all, with the dizzying array of hassles and mazes one encounters in opening a business, it was nearly a year from the time she closed on the building purchase until the gala opening of Café Marie.

  After the time and money she’d poured into the endeavor, it was a good thing the business was a success. According to my brother Brian, Mother’s start-up tab had been in excess of half a million and it had taken a lot of hard work over several years to put her into the black. She couldn’t afford to be pushed precipitously into the red again.

  Mother had removed the door and wide glass windows that fronted on the street, dating from the time when the rectangular building was a store. In their place were a series of smaller windows covered with turquoise shades. Under the windows were planter boxes full of bright colorful zinnias. A sidewalk led up the right side of the building to double doors, about midway into the lot. Next to this was a narrow strip of land planted with flowers that found their way onto Café Marie’s table, and herbs that wound up in the food. Through the doors there was a small waiting area with chairs on the left side and a long carved wooden bench on the right. A chest-high wooden stand held a phone and the reservation book.

  As I passed this the dining room was to my left, on two levels. Some of the tables shared floor space with the bar, but most of them were in a square area at the front of the restaurant, reached by a couple of shallow steps. I glanced aroun
d and saw a sea of white tablecloths set for the luncheon, turquoise napkins shaped and sticking out of glasses.

  Several of the luncheon attendees milled about in the dining room, holding glasses, standing between the tables, but most clustered at the L-shaped bar, in front of me and slightly to the right. Beyond that was the kitchen, visible from the bar through a cutaway window. Through this I saw several members of the kitchen staff arrayed in front of the bank of stoves, grilling what looked like salmon.

  I sidestepped a well-dressed couple and headed down a central hallway that led to the rear of the restaurant. The first doorway on my right led to a small cloakroom. The second was Mother’s office and, beyond that, two doors opening onto the rest rooms. Past this the hall jogged to the left, facing a wide shelf where the cooks placed orders ready for the servers to pick up and deliver to customers. To the right of the shelf the passage led into the kitchen, stoves and grills on the left and sinks and storage on the right. Near the back door was a pantry and a huge refrigerator and freezer.

  I stopped midway down the corridor and peered through the open door into Mother’s office. She sat in front of a keyboard and monitor, a cordless phone tucked between ear and shoulder. The whole restaurant operation was computerized, from dinner checks to ordering supplies, bookkeeping to tracking employee hours. I was continually amazed at how complicated this business was. Café Marie was a fairly small restaurant, only sixty seats. But those sixty seats were usually full every night and Mother took every aspect of the business personally.

  “It’s like inviting people into my own home,” she once told me.

  Mother waved at me. At the moment the people she’d invited into her home were keeping the man behind the bar busy. They appeared to be middle-aged, well kept, and financially comfortable, if their clothes were any indicator. I slipped onto a just vacated stool and watched the bartender work. His name was Evan and he’d been with Café Marie since it opened. He recognized me, grinned, and fetched a cold bottle of Calistoga before I had a chance to ask for it.

  Eavesdropping, while not socially acceptable, is often quite instructive. I put my antenna out as I sipped the mineral water. Mother hadn’t mentioned what organization had scheduled the luncheon here at Café Marie, but it didn’t take me long to deduce from the scraps of conversation I was overhearing that what all these people had in common was sailboats. They talked about marina berthing space, how limited and expensive it is, and they seemed to be planning a regatta.

  Bottle in hand, I left the bar stool and drifted slowly, scanning voices as though tuning in an array of radio stations. I heard a woman giving her companion a review of the jazz festival that had just taken place at the Fairgrounds. The man on my left was raving about the thirty-six-foot Pearson he’d just bought. Must mean a boat. Another woman was grousing about those damned tourists.

  “You can’t even get to Carmel on a weekend,” I heard her say. “The traffic is just incredible. And forget finding a place to park.”

  Her friend nodded. “It’s the same with Pacific Grove. I’d like to blow up that damned aquarium.”

  I moved into another conversation, this one about local politics. “It’s simple,” a man in a business suit said. “You just have to know which palms to grease.”

  To my left I saw Mother step out of her office, heading back to the kitchen to check on the progress of her staff. When would the illustrious Karl put in an appearance? I wanted to get a good look at him.

  I started to follow Mother down the hall, then I overheard something that made me stop. “I hope the food’s all right.” The speaker was a balding man in gray pinstripes, his listener a slender woman in a green dress. “I mean, I read that review in the Herald. It said this place wasn’t as good as it used to be.”

  “Well, it’s just salad and grilled salmon,” the woman said. “What could go wrong with that?”

  “Plenty,” the man said. “Didn’t you hear Karl Beckman got sick here? Food poisoning.”

  “Really?” The woman in the green dress frowned and looked toward the kitchen.

  Mother was right, I thought The rumor mill was active concerning the incidents at the restaurant The quicker I could get to the source of the trouble, the better.

  A woman entered the restaurant just then and stood near the reservation stand, tucking her sunglasses into a leather handbag. She looked around and spotted two other women at the bar, moving to join them. “I thought you’d bailed out,” one of her friends said. “Where have you been?”

  “I went to see Sylvie and Peter Logan. It’s dreadful. They’re just devastated. Ariel was their only child.”

  I examined this new arrival. She was in her late forties, wearing a magenta silk dress, a lot of chunky gold jewelry, and the cloying scent of too much overpriced perfume. Her helmet of silvery blond hair looked as though it would stay in place even during a hurricane. She joined her friends at the bar and asked Evan for a gin and tonic. “Sylvie and Peter have been in France,” she continued, after a healthy swig of her drink. “Sylvie’s mother is dying. Cancer. And now this.”

  Her friends leaned closer, making sympathetic clucks. One was older, a frail birdlike woman with white hair, dressed in a simple gray linen suit. The other was a redhead whose bright yellow dress made her look like a large canary.

  “How could this happen?” the older woman asked.

  “The boyfriend, of course.” The blonde in the magenta dress didn’t bother to lower her voice. “Who else? They had a fight in a bar. Peter is convinced this guy killed Ariel.”

  “Who is he?” The woman in yellow fingered the buttons on the front of her dress.

  “A fisherman, for God’s sake.” The blonde sneered. “Strictly blue collar.”

  My mouth quirked at her display of snobbery. I wondered if the speaker would ever give a thought to the source of the salmon she was about to have for lunch.

  “Why in the world did Ariel take up with a fisherman?” the woman in gray chimed in. “I thought she was seeing that nice young lawyer, Ryan something-or-other.”

  “Evidently not. Ariel and this fisherman had been seeing each other for several months. Sylvie and Peter didn’t care for the relationship.” The blonde took a sip of her drink and wrinkled her nose. “Maybe they’d finally talked some sense into her. Maybe the working-class guy was starting to pall and she wanted to end it. I’ll bet that’s what they were arguing about. I’ll bet he didn’t want to break up, and she did.”

  The two women who stood beside her nodded and murmured, putting their stamp of agreement on the blonde’s theory. Had Ariel Logan been trying to end her relationship with Bobby? Not according to Donna. She said they had talked of getting married. But what about this lawyer the older woman had mentioned? I shook my head. If this was any example of the rumors flying around the peninsula, people would be blaming Bobby for Ariel’s death. Apparently Ariel’s father had already made up his mind.

  As if responding to some hidden signal, people began moving away from the bar and into the dining room, pulling out chairs and sitting down. The blonde and her two companions drifted toward a nearby table. “There’s Karl Beckman,” the woman in yellow said. “But I don’t see Lacy with him. You know, I heard the Boat Works may close down.”

  “Really?” The white-haired woman sounded surprised. “It’s been there for years. And you’d think with all the people who own boats...”

  I drifted out of the range of her voice, looking toward the entrance of Café Marie. I saw my mother coming down the hallway from the kitchen. She spotted the new arrival and her brisk businesslike demeanor changed before my eyes. A smile lit up her face and she smoothed the skirt of her rose silk dress.

  He was tall, almost as tall as my father, with a big muscular frame dressed casually in dark blue slacks, a light blue shirt, and a sport jacket of muted plaid. He looked vital and vigorous and good-humored. When he reached my mother’s side, he took her arm, then bent his blond head close to her dark one and whispered somethin
g in her ear. She leaned her head back and laughed. As he joined in her laughter I got a good look at his face. It was broad and square, with blunt features and plenty of laugh lines around his hazel eyes. He had to be in his forties, ten years younger than Mother, if not more.

  So this was Karl Beckman. I wasn’t prepared for the hostility I felt.

  Eight

  THE ANTIPATHY I FELT FOR KARL BECKMAN WAS nothing compared with my reaction to Julian Surtees. Mother’s new assistant must be damned brilliant in the kitchen. Otherwise I couldn’t imagine how she put up with his arrogance.

  Donna had described Surtees as dark and brooding, his good looks causing flutters among the peninsula’s female population. And probably some of the males, I thought, looking at the handsome face that scowled at me across the cramped space of Mother’s office.

  Surtees looked lean and muscular in a pair of tight-fitting black jeans and a white T-shirt that showed off sinewy arms. He was in his midthirties, a few strands of gray in the black hair at his temples. The hair was brushed straight back off his high forehead, curling slightly around his ears. His left earlobe held a tiny gold stud. Opaque brown eyes glared at me from his olive-skinned face. His sensual lips turned down in a frown.

  The luncheon in Café Marie’s dining room was over. The guests had departed, leaving the staff to set up the dining room before the restaurant opened at its usual time of five-thirty. While the sailboat people wolfed down their grilled salmon and planned their regatta, I’d been in Mother’s office, going through her files.

  Café Marie had thirty-five employees, some of them part-time, all working various shifts. Many of these cooked, including a baker and a pastry chef who made all the breads and desserts served at the restaurant. Others waited on tables. Two alternated as bartenders, Evan and a woman named Lori. Others washed dishes and bused tables.

  I looked at some of the schedules for the past month, trying to get a sense for the day-to-day staffing of both the kitchen and the dining room. Back in the kitchen, the baker came in early, about seven in the morning. Then the dishwashers arrived at ten. The chef, Julian, arrived at one in the afternoon, and the rest of the cooks at two. Whoever was tending bar showed up at four, as did those who waited and bused tables. And it seemed Mother was there eighteen hours a day. Not only did she cook, during the day she acted as restaurant owner, ordering supplies and keeping the books.